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Arthur Symons - A Masque Of Shadows
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Poor helpless Shadow of Deceit, 
The shadow of no magic flower, 
I End you, Helen, in the Street 
This unanointed sacred, hour: 
Here where the dust of trodden feet 
Desecrates the street. 

This very hour that consecrates 
All that the night could never keep 
Menaces what our changeless Fates 
Leave to us in our dreamless sleep: 
Knave Menelaus desecrates 
The folly of our Fates.
 
Only, before the night grows thin 
About us in our city-street, 
What is the sin that we must sin, 
Helen, when dawn and darkness meet? 
Fine webs of passion our souls spin 
Out of their own deceit.
 
O lie with me on the naked grass 
In uttermost abandonment, 
Drink in the naked winds that pass, 
Drink deep of the passion of their scent, 
The scent of the Sea that sighs alas! 
My Helen`s scent! 

You came to me from the seventh gate 
Of that fire-doomed and deathless Troy, 
O passion-pale and passionate, 
O flesh most fair, mad to destroy 
That flesh that you are mad to hate, 
Mad to destroy. 

Over bright Paris lies the dust, 
And we are here and we must love 
Until our Love transfigures Lust, 
Then taste the poisoned scent thereof, 
As on the gallows a man upthrust 
Feeds on his lust.
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